The black money market is flourishing in Germany, making it easy for money launderers. Finance Minister Lindner wants to change that in the future. He wants a new agency specializing in financial crime.
Federal Finance Minister Christian Lindner is stepping up the fight against money laundering and financial crime. According to "Spiegel" information, he wants to set up a new higher federal authority that will bundle the fragmented competencies in Germany at a central point. "I propose a paradigm shift," says Lindner, justifying his move. "We must follow the money trail consistently, rather than settle for uncovering a crime related to money laundering."
According to Lindner's ideas, the new institution, whose name has not yet been decided, will rest on three pillars. The first, a new Federal Financial Criminal Police Office to be established, consists of an independent search area. Federal officials are supposed to work there who should be given real investigative powers.
The second pillar is to form the already existing Central Office for Financial Transaction Investigations (FIU). She is responsible for using sophisticated computer programs to filter out those cases from the numerous suspicious activity reports that the investigators are supposed to investigate.
Finally, the third pillar will be a coordinating central office for the supervision of the non-financial sector. This includes, for example, the real estate industry and the gambling industry. In these sectors of the economy, a particularly large amount of black money is channeled back into the regular economic cycle.
The trigger for Lindner's surcharge is a report by the international institution against money laundering, FATF, which deals with conditions and responsibilities in the fight against financial crime in Germany. The report is due to be published on Thursday. The verdict is sufficiently catastrophic, the report says. The FATF experts attest to Germany's massive shortcomings in the cooperation between the federal and state governments as well as difficulties in getting to the bottom of complex financial constructions in money laundering.
